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Establishing a social entrepreneurial system to bridge the digital divide for the poor: a case study for Taiwan

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Abstract

The issue of narrowing the digital gap for disadvantaged people has been widely discussed. Yet, the study of how to enable low-income people and homeless wanderers to access computers and the Internet, thereby enabling their upward movement in society, has been relatively neglected. In this paper, the authors aim to meld the literature on digital divide and social entrepreneurship to propose a social entrepreneurial system which uses universal service funds to spread IT technologies, leading to greater entrepreneurship and the gradual alleviation of poverty among disadvantaged people. The theoretical model is followed by a case study of the Taiwanese government’s efforts to ameliorate digital divides. The case study is used to show the size of the access problem and identify factors which cause inefficiencies in the current approach to reduce the digital divide. After showing the need to establish a social entrepreneurial system to solve these problems and effectively use the Internet as a means to reduce poverty, the paper concludes by discussing the model’s contribution to and implications for the social entrepreneurship literature and digital divide literature.

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Notes

  1. The survey data were provided by Feng-Qing Hong, a social worker in the Ping-Tung Homeless Shelter in Taiwan.

  2. Sharif [59] defined Technoware as the entirety of technology including both capital and intermediate-goods which can amplify various human capacities. Humanware is work related specifics skills, talents, ingenuity, creativity, craftsmanship, dexterity, etc. Inforware refers to the codified technical knowledge such as drawings, diagrams, formulae, theories, parameters, technical manuals, guides, etc. which are shareable technical information, specifications, standards and blueprints. Orgaware is a teamwork-embodied component. It involves organizational work assignments for day-to-day operations of production and service activities, and arrangements for using and controlling other factors of production used by humanware for any project. Cysnetware implies that the organization can well use the Internet-based communications technologies. It enables an enterprise to provide energy to all other components of the technological systems in use and at the same time contributes to get more work done with less resource.

  3. NCC was set up with the aim of regulating telecommunications, broadcasting and the Internet services on February 22, 2006. Originally, the authority belonged to the Directorate General of Telecommunications and the Department of Broadcasting Affairs of the Government Information Office. The merging of the communications authorities of these two entities under the mandate of the NCC is a milestone indicating the advent of digital convergence in Taiwan [48].

  4. There were 90,682 households approved as the low income households by the government in Taiwan in 2007 [53].

  5. There were 128,237 low income households in Taiwan in 2011 [53].

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Chiahsu Yuan in the National Information and Communications Initiative Committee of the Executive Yuan, Guo-Jeng Wang in the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission, Ying-Chi Shiau in the Environmental Protection Administration, Ruei-Ying Wang in the Council of Indigenous Peoples, Huei-Shiung Wang in the Council for Cultural Affairs, Cong-An Cai in the Ministry of Education, You-Jia Xiao in the Ministry of Interior, Yu-Fen Huang in the Council for Economic Planning and Development, and Feng-Qing Hong, Xiang-Ning He and Zhen-Quang Wang in Ping-Tung Homeless Shelter for providing data and assistances in the research. Thank you also to the anonymous reviewers and the editor of the journal whose careful reading and suggestions improved the paper.

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  1. Department of Economics, Ming Chuan University, Taoyuan, 333, Taiwan

    Shu-Chin Huang

  2. College of Business (Ret.), University of West Florida, Pensacola, FL, 32514, USA

    John Lew Cox

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Huang, SC., Cox, J.L. Establishing a social entrepreneurial system to bridge the digital divide for the poor: a case study for Taiwan. Univ Access Inf Soc 15, 219–236 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-014-0379-7

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